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Letter: Civility and facts go hand in hand

April 23, 2014 | 2:20 p.m.

Re: “Reasons for the Obama protest,” Mailbag, April 17. A caricature of the president of the United States as Hitler is not a “protest” and it's the opposite of patriotism. Why defend the indefensible? We can disagree without being disagreeable.

There is a huge, legitimate philosophical difference between those who think the federal government is doing too much, and those who thing it needs to do more. Actually, everyone I know thinks the IRS is doing too much, taking tax return money from people who happen to be related to others who are indebted to the U.S. Treasury. But I'm confident that ultimately this IRS action will be found to be what it is, illegal theft.

On the other hand, the notion that many people have lost healthcare coverage under “Obamacare” ignores the facts: The uninsured rate has gone down from 18% to less than 13%, and between the “marketplaces” and the Medicaid expansion, over 12 million more Americans have healthcare.

The Affordable Care Act is a bad law, hammered together from parts that don't really fit together well. The only thing worse is what we had before.

Some of us still have a concept of sin. The U.S.A., the richest country the world has ever known, has been allowing over 40,000 of its people to die every year — for lack of healthcare — before now, according to the best estimate I've seen. That is a sin, which Obama is trying to expiate. Certainly it's more effective to prevent heart attacks and strokes by treating high blood pressure and cholesterol than to wait until the damage is already done, and now more people can access preventive care.